by Christa Wick
"That sounds like Jake," I whispered, my ears straining to make out the identity of the second speaker. I presumed it was Dylan, but his words and volume were more restrained.
"Plus the meathead," Marjolein confirmed. Her brows suddenly pressed together and her head swiveled slowly in the direction of the door.
I realized why a second later as I heard the scrape of metal against metal.
"And Mishka," she growled, stomping over to her door, twisting the bolt back and throwing the door open so fast that the big Russian fell into her apartment. Beyond him, Jake and Dylan each had their hands wrapped around the other's head in some sort of billionaire headlock.
"You were not just picking the locks on my front door," she chided the bodyguard, her finger wagging a centimeter in front of his nose as the stark blue eyes stared up at her.
His face displayed a moment's confusion and then he grinned before growing somber once more. Still on the floor, he waved the Kehoe brothers inside as he explained the situation to Marjolein in his accented Russian. "Very bad protocol to be outside."
"Good habits keep you alive," I added. I wasn't happy Jake and Dylan were now inside and glaring at one another, but I had a soft spot for the Russian giant who had guarded me several more times after Miami.
For the moment, Dylan seemed completely forgotten by the feisty blonde. Her hands found her hips and she bent at the waist until her face was almost even with Mishka's. "Do that to my door again and you'll lose some of your stuffing, Teddy Bear."
Undaunted by the threat, Mishka regained his feet and returned to the outdoor walkway, shutting the door behind him. Jake shouldered his way past his big brother. Stopping in front of me, he wrapped one large hand around my wrist.
The contact puzzled me. It was proprietary, the dangerous sparkle in his gaze leaving no doubt in my mind. Despite Marjolein detailing all the ways she knew her former boss was in love with me, I still expected Jake to have decided he was done with me. I may have fallen hard for him, but it was too soon for a man, especially one with so many options, to feel the same.
"Time to talk," he said, his gaze moving toward the open door to the guest room.
I didn't say anything, just looked at Marjolein. I didn't know why. Certainly I could make up my own mind. Moral support, maybe. Or perhaps I didn't want to leave her alone with Dylan since I knew she didn't want to talk to him.
"I'll be fine," she said, approaching me and Jake. Putting a hand on each of our shoulders, she started shooing us into the guest room like a mother hen. "I'll be outside with Mishka if you need me."
"No, you'll be in here -- with me," Dylan argued as Jake closed the door.
Releasing my arm, Jake jerked his head at the door. "How much of an ass kicking do you think he's in for?"
He asked the question with a shaky smile. Trying to break the ice for whatever bomb he was preparing to drop, I guessed. I shrugged. I could spend the whole day talking about nothing if he wanted to play it that way. Whatever questions he had for me, I couldn't or wouldn't answer. And, no matter how much I knew that our time together would soon be over, I wasn't prepared to take the news like the big girl I was. The thought of him turning away hurt, even if I was the one pushing him to do so.
"Do you think they could ever be anything more than a fling?" I asked, my voice low and soft so they hopefully couldn't hear the question.
Jake sat down on the bed, his hands wrapping around the top edge of the mattress as he stared at the floor. "He has something in his past he needs to get over, she doesn't. So I'd say fifty-fifty chance they could make the big commit."
"Do you have something in your past?" I thought about the girl from the car wreck -- Linsey King. I hadn't asked him about her or anything else from before he met me because I didn't want to risk any reciprocal curiosity about my early life.
He lifted his head and looked at me, a firm, but fleeting, smile ghosting his face. "On paper, but not on my conscience."
His head bobbed a few times then he drew a deeper breath and looked at me. "But you do. I guess that makes us fifty-fifty, too."
My nose began to sting with the threat of tears. I tried to shake away the need to cry. Seeing the gesture, he misinterpreted its meaning.
"So you don't even give us those odds, baby?"
Exhausted from just a few minutes in Jake's presence, I sagged against the bedroom door. I started to tell him that wasn't what I meant, but then realized maybe it was. Even scraping away all the shit I'd had flung at me from birth, I still couldn't get past one thing, something that had deeply become a part of who I was...
I didn't know how to be loved.
"It's not about percentages," I answered, my hand landing on the door knob and closing around it. "I just need to leave."
Jake stood, his long legs reaching bringing him to me in two steps. His palm landed lightly against the door above my head and then he leaned in, his weight and muscle preventing me from leaving the room unless I wanted to throw myself out the window.
For one flashing second, I considered doing just that.
"You're staying." His voice had a ruthless, determined edge to it. I knew that if I dared to look up, I would see the same qualities in his hard gaze.
I didn't look up. Just continued listening.
"You won't engage with me, but you can continue as the spokesmodel. Riona loves your look, thinks it's absolutely perfect."
My lips flattened together and I began to squirm in the small space between his body and the door. I felt certain at that second that he no longer desired me, that everything was, once again, all about business. His next few sentences only drove the point home.
"We're selling luxury, but we're also selling 'being out there' in what we like, proclaiming our tastes with pride. You have a very real star quality, Alexa, like Adele or Christina Hendricks, only with a damn jet pack strapped to your curves."
Listening to language that sounded like he'd read it in a damn brochure, my lips pressed more tightly together.
"And if you think leaving will make your parents go away, or the paparazzi vanish, you're wrong, baby girl. Your parents are nut jobs and the media has latched onto the same X factor that sucked me in."
His fingers wrapped gently around my chin. He nudged my face upward until I finally met his gaze.
"I've already talked to an attorney about your legal problems, they can be solved."
I nodded. "Marjolein said as much because my intent was personal safety and not any attempt to defraud anyone."
"Did she also tell you how much it would cost?" With his back to the light and his head pointed down, his jewel-like eyes looked as black as a shark's. When I nodded again, he pressed a little harder. "You said that you were leaving the money behind when you left, all of it. So that's money you won't have if you go."
I answered with another dip of my head, defeat wrapping around me like a cold, wet blanket.
"So don't leave," he finished. "Stay, let me handle the press, your parents and the attorneys. I won't touch you again and, when it all dies down, you'll leave."
I sucked a jagged breath in. He probably thought he was offering me a great deal, but I knew it was nothing more than charity and preserving his business reputation. No matter how big of a mistake he had made in selecting me, he would convince the world otherwise and then he would quietly dissolve the business relationship.
"Fine," I answered and tugged my chin from his grip. "As long as you understand there will be no more scenes and I can't travel overseas until the passport issue is cleared up."
He drew back, his hard stare cutting at me for a few seconds before he slowly nodded his agreement.
Hearing Marjolein's sharp tones in the next room, I pushed my luck a little harder. "And Dylan needs to give Jo-Jo her space."
"Of course," he answered coldly, his hand sliding down the door to brush my hand from the handle. He turned the knob and I stepped aside. As he crossed the threshold into the living room, he glanced once at me
over his shoulder and drove the knife in my heart a little deeper.
"But that I'm doing for her, not you."
********************
My plan, and Marjolein's, was that I would move in with her. Considering how well we got along, her newness to the area, and the location of the photo shoots now moved to Dallas, it made perfect sense for both of us. Jake vetoed the idea. He didn't want me in his bed, clearly, but he insisted that we stick as close to the original agreement as possible, which meant that I would live in the Dallas penthouse he rented as soon as he discovered the arrangement I had made with Marjolein.
Fine, he had his bedroom, I had mine. He used one of the spare rooms in the penthouse to work with the Chicago office daily, while I spent as much of my day as I could at the studio with Marjolein and Riona. When I wasn't flashing the glam for the camera, I pitched in with any grunt work Marjolein had so that she got her time in front of the camera, as well.
Oh, and Rick kept sending proof sheets of Marjolein to Dylan. But that's another story and it's not mine. I just floated around entertaining myself with the idea of how the elder Kehoe must be walking around his fancy Chicago office with the biggest set of blue balls ever recorded. Secretly, I think Jo-Jo entertained herself with the same idea. There was a new swing in her luscious hips and a smile was never absent from her face except when she was comforting me over my increasingly conflicted feelings for Jake.
I mean, how could they not be conflicted? He didn't want me, the bored glaze of his told me as much, but he wanted me in the same house. And he moved around that house like we truly lived together. It seemed like every other morning I found him in the kitchen with nothing more than a towel around his trim waist, his dark hair still wet from the shower and small drops of water clinging to his shoulders as he juiced some abominable combination of fruits and vegetables.
Part of me -- the part that apparently hadn't been introduced to my internal coward -- wanted to retaliate with a similar state of undress in the morning. But I knew that if he had bothered to look me in the eye on those mornings, he would have seen desire sparking in my green gaze. I would see hard glass and nothing more staring back at me.
So I didn't leave my room in anything less than the clothes I would wear to the studio. And I stayed in my room more and more.
I thought it would go on like that forever until I was getting ready to head to the studio at the end of week three. Jake stopped me as I walked toward the front door.
"Give me a few more minutes, Alexa."
I turned, relieved to see that he was in dark slacks and an equally dark sweater instead of just the towel. He had keys in his hand, but seemed to be searching for something. Waiting, I said nothing.
"My briefcase..." he mumbled, his torso dipping down as he looked under the long table in front of the floor to ceiling glass doors that opened onto the balcony.
"It's not in your office?" I asked, wishing he'd get around to whatever he wanted to say to me before I left.
His cheeks flashed red and I saw the slightest hint of an eye roll before he went down the hall, disappeared for a second then returned with his briefcase. "Okay, I'm ready."
More confused than ever, I stared at him.
"I need to go into the studio. Your attorney agreed to meet us there."
"Oh..." I knew my jaw was likely brushing against the top of my Italian leather boots, but it took me a few seconds to recover and ask, "Why do you need to go in?"
His jewel-like gaze sparkled at me and I anticipated his sarcastic answer before it shot past his lips.
"Because I'm paying him."
"Whatever." I pulled the front door open and stepped into the private hallway where the elevator was located. My blood was at a slow boil. I had said that I would pay for the attorney -- but securing the right firm to do the job was more than a matter of money. Most clients don't choose one of the top firms, the firm choses the client. I quickly found my selection of attorneys limited to the kind who worked out of their homes or in the office equivalent of strip malls.
Until the Kehoe name came up...
"Yeah, whatever," he replied with a soft chuckle that surprised me.
Waiting for the elevator, I avoided looking at him. My cheeks stung with the knowledge that the most pleasantly voiced words I'd heard from Jake in three weeks were nothing more than a smart ass retort to my smart ass retort. Mostly, he hadn't spoken at all.
Jake pushed the button that would take us down to the garage then fiddled with some app on his phone until the doors opened to let us out. He had borrowed one of Riona's vehicles for the duration of his stay in Dallas.
A gun metal Audi R8, it made my ovaries weep the first time I saw it. This would be the first time I actually sat in the thing. Jake reached the car before me, his long legs taking him around to the passenger side. He opened my door and waited for me to slide inside before shutting me in. I watched him walk around the front of the vehicle. As low as the car sat, all I could see was the middle slice of his height -- gorgeous ass, sleek waist, powerful thighs and...
I caught my breath at the side view. The slacks were tighter at the crotch than they had been in the penthouse. The man was fully erect. I couldn't fathom why, but I pulled my skirt a little lower down my legs so that there was barely a gap between the hem and the top of my boots. Just a peek of my lower thighs and I would have visually erased even that glimpse of my flesh if I could.
Jake folded his long frame into the driver's seat and we were off. I kept sneaking surreptitious glances at his lap -- until he noticed.
Sort of.
"Something on your mind?" he asked as he signaled the next to last turn we would take in reaching the manufacturing offices and Riona's studio.
"No," I mumbled.
"You keep looking over here." The car pulled to a stop at the traffic light.
Inwardly, I breathed a sigh of relief. We were almost at our destination. I could see the next light. We would turn there. The building's drive was just a quarter mile later. I could talk that long without admitting any kind of curiosity or guilt.
Curiosity...
I forced a smile to my face as I found an excuse for all those glances. "It's just that I've never seen the inside of one of these. The dash looks like it belongs in a plane."
"Next time, you can drive."
His voice sounded distracted. I looked around the street and saw why. A news van was at the next light, it's signal on for the same left turn we would take.
"It's local," I noticed. "Maybe it's not for us."
I really didn't want to spend any more time in the car with Jake. I could smell the way his cologne intimately covered his skin, the scent warmed by his body heat. The car's interior admitted no outside noise, leaving the rhythm of his breathing audible. I could hear mine as well and it was speeding up.
As heavenly as the leather seats felt against my bottom, they were new and I had begun to shift restlessly against them. That was another thing we could both hear. The longer we were locked together inside the vehicle, the more tense I would grow.
"You should just take the turn," I suggested. "We can always drive by if they pull into the building's lot or anything like that."
I watched as a scowl crawled down his face, but he merged into the turn lane and flicked the control stick for the indicator light. We were right behind the van at that point. The green arrow lit and we moved forward. Even with all of our attention focused on the van, we barely missed slamming against it when the driver made a hard left in front of the studio and quickly backed up to block our lane.
"Damn," Jake growled and threw the car into reverse, his foot still on the brake. Looking in the rearview mirror, his face reddened.
Glancing over my shoulder, I wanted to puke. Ruth and Donald where behind us in a white sedan. My gaze jumped forward to the news van. The driver was still inside but the side door slid open and a cameraman came out, a male in a business suit holding a microphone following a second later.
"Stay in the car," Jake warned as he put the vehicle in park and reached for his door handle.
I placed my hand over his arm, my voice quivering as I pleaded with him. "Stay with me."
His head turned slowly in my direction. Fire burned in his eyes. He shook his head, the motion glacial and resolute. "No, Alexa."
He got out, swiftly hitting the door lock before slamming the door. I pulled my phone from my bag and quickly dialed Marjolein's number. Twisting in my seat while I waited for her to answer, I watched Jake reach through the driver side window of the sedan and rip Donald out of the car.
The camera man rushed past the Audi. Frantically, one hand holding the phone to my ear, I struggled to unlatch my seat belt. I couldn't see Donald, but I saw Jake's arm rearing back. It smashed forward, reared back again, this time with blood on it.
The cameraman kept on filming while the other guy had the microphone to his face, his lips moving rapidly. I jumped out of the car then pressed myself flat against it as Mishka raced past me. He ripped the video camera out of the photographer's grip and smashed it to the ground. Bending down, he scooped up the memory disc and pocketed it.
Moving forward to restrain Jake, the big Russian took one last shot at the camera by smashing his boot down on the device and then he slammed his boss against the back of the Audi and restrained Jake with a forearm against his throat.
"Don't make me hurt you, Nazarov," Jake barked.
Without hesitation, I placed my hand on Jake's shoulder. "Please, stop."
Tears streamed down my cheeks. I moved closer and eased Mishka out of the way so that I was the only thing stopping Jake from attacking Donald again.
"He's not worth it," I begged. Guilt flooded through me at the thought that Jake and Mishka might be in the back of a cop car on their way to jail before the morning was over.
Everything I touched turned to shit!
Jake pulsed forward. I braced myself in anticipation of having him push me aside, but he wrapped his arms around me and drew me tight against his chest.